While watching a film or television show, you may not immediately appreciate the effort of a sound effects editor. By their very nature, sound effects are generally background information that is meant to deliver a more complete sensory experience. However, if you can close your eyes—just listen—and see in your mind just as clearly the action on screen, likely the sound effects provide you with an accurate mental picture.

Consider for a moment the last feature film you saw in the theater or on Netflix, did you dutifully sit through the entire credit roll? Probably not. Somewhere, the negative cutter on Jurassic Park is crying inside.

On a lucky day, the average film may require only a few minutes of replacement dialogue to substitute for unusable audio recorded during principal photography. Then there are those films that necessitate a great deal of ADR because of added special effects or particularly challenging environmental conditions where ADR editors may be working on replacement tracks in the double-digits. When a single ADR editor winds up with a massive workload, he or she often relies on an assistant to keep the process organized and efficient.